WHEN Kim Cattrall says she is going shopping, it’s hard not to picture her walking into the ritzy, glitzy high end stores of New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Fans of Sex And The City would expect nothing less.

This is a woman, after all, who starred in the acclaimed series as Samantha Jones, a character who enjoyed a ferocious appetite for everything Manhattan had to offer as long as it was daring, designer and very, very expensive.

As she visits Edinburgh, however, it’s not the exclusive shops of the capital she will be found in but rather the nooks and crannies of the back streets as she seeks out flea markets and second hand goods.

The 59 year-old actress has not fallen on hard times but she has plans instead to indulge her passion for a more homely pursuit, the kind of endeavour which would have turned up the toes of Samantha’s Christian Louboutin shoes.

She said: “I have a new hobby. I have become an apprentice indigo dyer. It’s a really odd thing, right? The thing I like about it is about renewal. I am looking for vintage pieces.

"I find linens, they have to be in some condition, not falling apart, and a lot of them, because they are usually white or off white, have lost their colour and I love dipping them, especially in indigo, which is a very beautiful colour which has very many degrees, depending on how many time you dip it.

Kim Cattrall in Sensitive Skin

“So I have been collecting beautiful lace or canvas, some embroidered and some not, which have been cast aside because they have stains or been worn and paled, and I dip them and bring them back to life. I have a vat at home in my basement. That’s where you’ll often find me. I have spent more time in my basement for the last couple of months than I care to say.”

Not for the immediate future, however. She is in Edinburgh for the 70th International Film Festival, where she has taken part in a q&a about her career and is sitting on the jury to select the Michael Powell Award for best British feature film. Shopping will take second place to movies but she is also determined to take in Edinburgh on her third visit to the city.

She attended the festival in 2011 and returned the year after on a trip round the Highland and Islands with the ashes of her late father. When the EIFF’s Artistic Director, Mark Adams asked her to attend this year, she didn’t hesitate.

She said: “I knew Mark would pick really interesting films and I wanted to know more about Scotland. I was here in 2011 and in 2012 I took this incredible journey. I arrived in Glasgow and I did this sort of half crescent moon over Scotland, went to Inverness, Nairn, then I went to Fife to visit friends and then I came to Edinburgh.

"I had my dad’s ashes with me the whole time. I did it with friends from New York and then they went back to Glasgow and I drove from Edinburgh to Liverpool and put my dad’s ashes in the family grave which was beautiful. So I felt that he was on this last journey with me.

“Being here I will get to know more and being on the Michael Powell jury I am getting to see all these Scottish films so we will see what happens. I’m so honoured to be put in a position to encourage people who are making still making films. When you think of all the film scripts out there and producers and directors , that you actually got a film made is a mini-miracle in this day and age.”

She knows what she is talking about. The bright lights of Sex and The City dazzle a very long and varied career which stretches back to the 1970s, a time when she was one of the last contract player for the major studios, signing to Universal in 1976 and starting out on now classic TV shows such as Quincy, Starsky and Hutch and The Incredible Hulk. A self-confessed “hippy chick from Vancouver island” her jeans and tee-shirt look didn’t cut it and she was told in no uncertain terms.

Kim Cattrall is back in front of the camera (Image: Sky Arts 1)

She said: “I really learnt it was going to take more than my intelligence and my talent for me to be successful. I remember one of the heads of the talent programme had a meeting with me and said ‘you’re getting the job on your reading but your losing them on your wardrobe’. I said what I wear doesn’t have anything to do with my talent but she said ‘no, no, this is Hollywood. You have to dress a certain way.”

She would bring the lessons she learned to the character of Samantha when she was cast in Sex and the City in 1997. Starring alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon, the HBO series won praise, plaudits - including a Golden Globe and five Emmy nominations for Kim - and worldwide fan base.

Although she had starred in films like the original Police Academy, John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China and Mannequin it transformed her career and still resonates today.

The three-times married actress, who was born in Liverpool, grew up in Canada and lives in New York, has just returned to TV screens in critically-acclaimed black comedy Sensitive Skin, playing a woman dealing with the uncertainties of middle age and beyond. She also produces the series, which has just begun its second series on Sky Arts.

She said: “For me to executive produce Sensitive Skin and still be challenging myself, and being able to as woman of my age, is not usual.

“After Sex and the City people said you have to do another series, you have to do a spin-off but I really felt like I had done that. I don’t think I could have got better writers or given a better performance. I feel like I have completely ridden that horse and been completely satiated and satisfied.

Kim Cattrall with her Sex and the City co-stars (Image: Getty)

“I went back to the theatre in London, specifically, and now have gone back to television, telling the story of a completely different character as Davina Jackson in Sensitive Skin which is the story of an everywoman, who reflects issues that I am dealing with. I feel like if after 50 I have been dealing with these issues it must be happening to other women. I’ve never heard that story before, that is what motivates me to say yes to work.”

Sex And The City enjoyed two film spin-offs, the most recent in 2010. The world has changed, drastically, and she doubts it will return.

She said: “I think the climate changed. To have four women talking about shopping trips and spending $400 on shoes when people are having trouble putting food on the table? It doesn’t mean we don’t need that but I think the pendulum swung in a different direction.

“Everyone is doing their own thing and if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. It would be a challenge to do a third instalment. It could be fun though. To say goodbye completely to Samantha would be pretty hard.”